A group of motherboard enthusiasts working for GIGABYTE, sharing their insider knowledge and general ramblings of the motherboard business, the tech industry, latest technologies and trends, and other random odds and ends.

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Hi Tech Legion give GIGABYTE A55M-DS2 Gold Award

Designed as an affordable alternative to the AMD A75 chipset boards, motherboards based the AMD A55 chipset offer a great value proposition for mainstream DIYers who want to take advantage of AMD Llano APUs and their ability to offer surprisingly good 3D gaming without a discrete GPU. The first GIGABYTE A55 series boards have started showing up in the market place in recent weeks, and we’re now starting to see some media reviews crop up too. Hi Tech Legion have just published their review of our A55M-DS2 board, and it would seem that they see great potential for people building a PC on a budget, without compromising on gaming or multimedia performance.

Reviewer Eric Stemplewski notes that MicroATX boards our A55M-DS2 that use the new APUs from AMD, are in fact perfectly positioned for smaller, multi-media focused systems:

“When I thought about Llano and the Lynx platform, something more like this is what I pictured. I never thought of a full size desktop computer as having an all in one type system really defeats the purpose. I pictured microATX boards in a small, compact case. I envisioned a HTPC system that could actually fit near the TV, and offer desktop like performance. Everything that I saw last CES regarding Llano made me think compact computing, such as notebooks. The first taste of AMD's fusion technology came in their Brazos form which was miniITX. I figured Llano would be a little better in the microATX, while Bulldozer would be the one to hit the enthusiast market in the usual full ATX size.

The perfect situation for the GA-A55M-DS2 is in a budget system. Let me piece together a quick system with price; GA-A55M-DS2 ($68), A6-3650($120), 4GB G.Skill DDR3 1600 ($27); Segate Baraccuda Green 1TB ($50); MicroATX Case w/ PSU ($80); Extras like Optical and Keyboard Mouse ($40). That is a complete budget system in small Micro ATX size that only totals $385…..The Gigabyte GA-A55M-DS2 does a good job offering all of the performance of a full desktop when paired with the right APU.”

Here’s a short overview video from Eric which goes through all the important features of the board.

Of course we’re proud to see Eric goes on to award the Hi Tech Legion ‘Gold Award’.